Savage Garden: A Novel (Eve Diamond Novels) (Eve Diamond Novels) (Hardcover)

by Denise Hamilton (Author) "All day the sun had baked the concrete, sending waves of heat shimmering skyward..." (more)
Key Phrases: savage garden, mystery lover, Victoria Givens, Catarina Velosi, Felice Morgan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Hamilton's fictional counterpart, L.A. Times reporter Eve Diamond (The Jasmine Trade, etc.), investigates another murder in California's melting pot. When unpredictable actress Catarina Velosi fails to show up for her play's premiere, Eve and her boyfriend, Silvio Aguilar, are dispatched to find her. Bloodstains in Catarina's Echo Park apartment lead Eve to suspect foul play—and the police to suspect Silvio. Eve's got an unwelcome sidekick in Felice Morgan, a slick young African-American reporter with hot credentials. Is Felice another Jayson Blair? Is Silvio tied to the murder? Eve and Felice pursue the case, interviewing Catarina's old drama teacher, the alcoholic wife of the playwright, an assemblyman's flirtatious assistant, a drug-dealing neighbor and a Hollywood mogul, among others. Like Raymond Chandler, Hamilton describes California in gritty, lyrical prose; like Sue Grafton, she shows a tough-skinned, tenderhearted heroine breaking a few rules, if not a few bones. Hamilton humanizes Eve through her personal ties to the murder and her professional doubts about Felice; she enriches the novel's atmosphere with music (the title comes from a song playing ominously in Catarina's apartment) and coastal landscapes. Hamilton's social insights about race and success may not always feel profound, but her compassion for her characters and knowledge of their worlds make her novel compelling reading.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In the fourth Eve Diamond novel (Last Lullaby, 2004), the resourceful L.A. Times reporter's plans for an evening at the theater go awry before the curtain rises. The leading lady, the playwright's muse, is missing, and Eve's boyfriend, Silvio, the playwright's best friend, is asked to search for her. Eve tags along to get the story and later wishes she hadn't. The drama queen, who turns up at the bottom of a cliff, has left a trail of brokenhearted suspects that includes Silvio. While some of the elements here seem stock--a reformed gangbanger turned artiste, a bewitching diva, close-knit Latinos who call each other "homes"--Hamilton's tale is a nice update on the hard-boiled genre. Certain plot elements have a 1940s feel, yet her sensual, conflicted sleuth lives in a distinctly modern world of cell phones and BMWs. And a story line involving Eve's resentment at the fast-tracking of an African American reporter adds a topical twist while still evoking classic crime-novel themes of class and identity. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1st ed/1st printing edition (April 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743261925
• ISBN-13: 978-0743261920
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,308,939 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hamilton's at the Top of Her Game in Newest Diamond Mystery, May 12, 2005

By	Amy Senk "Read it, Loved it" (Orange County, CA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Eve Diamond should be sipping a drink in her retro cocktail dress, boyfriend Silvio at her side and a night of cutting-edge theater stretched before her. But when the diva star of the play is a no-show, Eve and Silvio go to check on her as a favor to the director, who is Silvio's old friend.

By the end of the first chapter, it's clear that Eve isn't going to see the show. But the good news is that Eve, a seasoned LA Times reporter, has a big jump on her competition in what promises to be a huge breaking story.

Savage Garden is Hamilton's best-written of the four-book Eve Diamond series. It is filled with underlying themes of trust and honesty that support the plot and add depth and a certain edgy mood to the story. Are reporters making up quotes and fabricating sources? Are they stealing each other's ideas? Is Silvio being honest with Eve about his own relationship with the missing actress?

As usual, Hamilton nails the dynamics of an urban newsroom, with its hierarchies and posturing. Eve doesn't like having a new hot-shot reporter sitting at her desk, using her phone and listening in on her conversations. But she herself is not above stealing a story by pretending she couldn't stop her colleague in time to do it himself. Readers of previous Diamond mysteries are aware of Eve's insecurities and jealousies and ambition, and this book takes all these traits up a notch.

Hamilton uses the city of Los Angeles as a perfect setting for her vibrant story lines. She sets scenes in fantastic ethnic restaurants, poverty-filled neighborhoods, dense forests, rugged oceanside cliffs. The action pops off the pages, and the writing shows great style.

Savage Garden is a terrific mystery, a must-read with a strong woman lead character and a lot of suspense.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "He had a history that was not ours. He had secrets", July 5, 2005

By	M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The sassy, brazen journalist Eve Diamond is back in yet another sensational thriller from Denise Hamilton. Again using the sun drenched streets of Los Angeles as her backdrop, Hamilton drops her heroine into the thick of murder, obsession, jealousy, and all-consuming passion in a story that has all the epic qualities of a Greek tragedy.

In Savage Garden, the action - and there's plenty of it - takes place throughout this vast, diverse city: from the inner city suburb of Echo Park and the barrios of East L.A. to the exclusivity of Malibu, and the serenity of the Angeles National Forest, Hamilton incorporates her trademark knack for relentless and unyielding suspense.

Employing a terse, tense first person narrative, Savage Garden, homes in on local stage diva, Catarina Velosi. Catarina has inexplicably gone missing just before her debut performance in the new play Our Lady of the Barrio. Alfonso Reventon, who wrote the play for her is concerned, so Silvio, his best friend, offers to go to her apartment to check on her. Of course, the ever- curious Eve decides to tag along, in the hope of a good story.

Catarina's apartment is empty, but the couple discovers bloodstains on the pillow of her bed and also on the open window. It's a disturbing scene and Eve immediately expects that the disappearance involves foul play. When Catarina's body is later found, the case becomes personal for Eve, for the police believe Silvio knows something because of his past relationship with the victim. Eve begins to wonder what secrets Silvio had with both Catarina and Alfonso; the life he had before he met Eve.

Eve soon discovers, with the help of her arch nemesis, the smart, and very ambitious African-American reporter Felice Morgan, that there were a number of people who were quite upset with Catarina: There's Marisela, Alfonso's neurotic wife, who changes like quicksilver from pathetic drunk to wronged wife to vulnerable little girl. She's a troubled, unhappy woman, who seems to be behaving like the real actress, moving fluidly and lithely among many different roles.

Suspicion also falls on Alfonso, for it is soon revealed that he has been having a passionate affair with Catarina. Alfonso, who has used his barrio roots as a badge of authenticity for his plays - gaining fame and fortune on the backs of the lives he has exploited - saw Catarina's unmistakable talent, eventually offering her, her big break. And what of Catarina's drama coach Victoria Givens? Victoria steadily used the make-believe of theater to seduce wayward teens from their grim realities while she basked in the glories of her star pupil.

Escaping childhood horrors through the stage, Catarina revisited the barrio each night tearing her heart open for adoring fans while keeping her real life hidden. She was a tortured, hard-bitten soul, and Eve, while fanatically trying to put together the patchwork quilt of her life, discovers secrets and lies that have long been buried.

But Eve must also contend with the duplicitous nature of Felice who has a tendency to make things up. Can Eve trust Felice not to steal her stories? If she trusts Felice and ends up wrong about the younger reporter's authenticity, she could also get herself killed. Eve, however, knows one thing for sure, Felice is an enigmatic reporter from the wrong side of the tracks and she's trying effortlessly to shrug off her own skin and slip into a newer more glamorous one.

Savage Garden is also about the somewhat hard-won journey of LA's disenfranchised Latino community. The Latino characters in this novel have tried desperately to pull themselves out of poverty, and the barrio dangers of crime, drugs, gangs and violence. It's just so unfortunate that Catarina and Alfonso have risen to the level of superstars, only to be torn apart in the end by the dark secrets of their past.

Hamilton writes with a confident rigor, portraying an LA that inexplicably turns everyone into actors, pining for the role that they just can't have. It's a city where beauty is always more exquisite when backlit by horror, and where the sublime is entwined with the profane. Betrayal, blood, murder, the corruption of money, and also the inevitability of fate are at the heart of this exciting, exhilarating, and bracing murder mystery. Mike Leonard July 05.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Zero to 60 in 5 paragraphs, May 8, 2005

By	Ross A. Hugovidal (Portland, ME USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Hamilton jams her plot's pedal to the metal on page one, and never lets up. Savage Garden flat out smokes. Careening across the vast expanse of Los Angeles County, from the barrios to Malibu, Echo Park to the Pacific Coast Highway, Savage Garden unflinchingly targets those souls who view LA as a giant stage for their own star turns, only to so often find the tank empty. Like their city, Hamilton's characters are constantly shifting, changing, and little is as it seems. And motion, relentless motion. It's Chinatown with a latin beat and modern style. It's Chandler for the here and now. Hamilton's taut prose and exquisitely etched characters are the perfect vehicles for advancing her plot and ratcheting up the suspense. Savage Garden is the finest all-around effort to date from a significant new voice in crime fiction.